For All-Star weekend, the NBA released an AMO-style interactive map of the history of New York City basketball. The colorful map shows a long history as diverse as the city itself, from prep stars such as Queens’ Bob Cousy and Brooklyn’s Lance Stephenson to the storied histories of the Knicks and Nets.
Full interactive map here. Via the NBA
Of course, this is just a recent example of how the interactive map has become one of the most popular and intuitive ways to represent data about cities. It has become an easier and more powerful technique with the increases in available data on the internet and through open-source API’s, most notably from Google Maps. In fact, New York City publishes much of its information in the form of an interactive (albeit clunky) map.
Image courtesy Inside Airbnb: New York City
The Inside Airbnb: New York City app takes an activist role in exposing the reality of what effects Airbnb is having on the city. “Behind buzzwords like ‘the sharing economy’ and ‘disruptive,’ Airbnb as a platform simply allows many of their hosts to operate unlicensed, unregulated and untaxed hotels in residential neighborhoods.” It picks up where a 2013 report by the New York State Attorney General left off.
Here are some of our favorite interactive maps from our archives. They cover a range of subjects, but they all look good doing it.
A small yellow dot representing a cab moves around the city picking up passengers, its route tracked by a blue line. Red and green dots show pickups and drop offs, and the metrics of passengers, fares, and tolls are all charted along with the visualized route. This app will give you newfound appreciation of the hard work cabbies do to get everyone where they need to go.
Livehoods
This app uses geolocated check-ins from smart phones to illustrate the character of a neighborhood. It is useful for those trying to figure out where to live or go out, as it cuts through some of the realtor speak and tracks real people in the area.
Accidental Skyline
To improve government transparency, this interactive map allows citizens to track land that has available development rights and see how it could impact their neighborhood. This is part of a broader project by MAS to work with the city to make regulatory changes that will better protect iconic public spaces.
Cube Cities
Intended to assist in disaster recovery and emergency response, this Google Earth-based visualization tool takes data from the API and turns it into 3D maps for the use of the fire department, developers, or city planners.
NYC Taxi Holiday Visualization
It is another app meant to visualize taxis, but with a focus on holiday traffic from the JFK and LGA airports. The long trek from the airport after a long flight is shown as flashes on a map, and can be filtered to include your favorite airline or terminal.